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Essence of Jainism
this is found in the ancient Āgamas such as Ācāränga, Sūtrakặtangas etc. Thə glory of non-violence as a doctrine of religion has arisen from the vision of similarity of Souls. This doctrine is narrated and analysed in the Agamas as follows : (1) All violence deserves to be discarded becauso it leads to sorrow
and fear. This is the basic argument of the doctrine of non
violence. (2) Violence means ending somebody's life or torturing others.
Still, the blemishes born of violence depend only on infatuation or attachment and jealousy etc. If there is no inlatuation or attachment, mere ending of life cannot come under the cate
gory of violence This constitutes an analysis of non-violence. (3) The purport of the blemish of violence does not depend upon
the relative importance of the size, number and senses of the living beings that are killed. It depends upon the result of the violating person or the intensity or otherwise, his knowing or unknowing action or the use of force. This constitutes the purport of non-violence.
The three matters mentioned above became fruitful in the thought and conduct of Lord Mahavira and are woven in the Agamas. Howsoever spiritual an individual or a group of indivi. duals may be, when they ponder over the question of sustaining life with self-control, the abovementioned analysis and stages. naturally result from it. Thinking on these lines, we must concede that the detailed discussion that took place in the later Jain literature regarding non-violence had its basic support right from the beginning in the Jain Āgamas.
When we take a review of he discussion of non-violence that we come across in the Jain literature, we can clearly see that this, discussion is mainly dependent upon four forces. The first is that it takes into consideration the non-violence principally of the lives of Sadhus, i.e., of perfect non-violence.
The second is that it strongly protests against the violence such as that in the sacrifice as laid down in the Brahmanic tradition. The third is that the other Srāmaņa traditions insist on the
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